SURREALISM. Surrealism is alive and well in Catalonia, only domesticated on a plate at Sant Pau. The kitchen of Carme Ruscadella cooks in a whimsical way that echoes her great Catalan artistic predecessors, but through the necessary precision to maintain 3 Michelin stars forestalling the excesses of Dali, a fascination with communicating geometrical shapes evoking Miro but departing from his primodial soup aesthetic with its liking for geometric precision.

THE ROOTS OF SURREALISM at my meal at Sant Pau:

Fusion: (a Dali-esque technique recalling his 3-dimensional works like Lobster Telephone): “Padrón and rice croquette” Two typical Catalan tapas, the padron pepper and the croquette, were fused into a padron croquette. Seductively mute and provocative, a recently-birthed Venus.

Whimsical descriptions: “Lobster pizza: raw and cooked vegetables, creamy mozzarella”: Lobster “pizza”, overflowing a dough base, had none of the flat pizza geometry, instead forming a tower of ingredients. To describe it as “pizza” was accurate in the technical sense that there was dough underneath, and in the sense that the flavors were broadly what we’d recognise as margherita pizza. The description was off-beat. It was quite a change from my last major meal at Asador Etxebarri, where all the dish descriptions were literal and minimalist (mirroring the food). It was as whimsical as Mugaritz, but the dish descriptions at Mugaritz were literal, minimalist, and the surprise came from the menu description itself: “7 Spice Rattle”; “”Fifth Quarter Octopus”. For “Lobster Pizza”, the description was doubly absurd – firstly, no one does a lobster pizza; secondly, that wasn’t a lobster pizza.

Atypical Geometric Constructions: “Gambes on Sailor’s Toast: tribute to the local sailors cuisine”: Instead of serving the dish with prawns on top, the bread is served with prawns wrapped around it.

Chimera: The Dragon at the end, was a chimera of 7 different textures, each sheet whimsically sculpted to resemble dragon-parts.

*(My favorite Food-Text Interplay at Per Se is the clever linguistic pun – “pearls” in “oysters and pearls” being tapioca pearls)

A MEAL AT SANT PAU AS FOOD

As a meal for showcasing artistic vision, Sant Pau is first-class. But tastewise, much of the meal was merely pleasant, with nothing that remains as a strong impression two months later. It is not the case at Sant Pau that dishes are composed to be eye-candy without having a strong taste-backbone – frequently the more visually stunning dishes were the ones that tasted better. Instead, the clunkers were dishes like “John dory and curry: courgette, eringui and potatoes”, and “Vegetal Dim Sum”, dishes in the International Style that tasted pleasant and were precisely executed, but seemed at Sant Pau to lack fireworks in both aesthetics and tastiness.

As a diner my overall impression was that, besides the stupendously delicious bread, every morsel of food at Sant Pau, taste-wise, was precisely calculated to be pleasant. The strongest impressions I carry are the riot of colours and the geometric precision of the dishes – a vibrant surreal feast for the eyes, the literal feast more muted. On the whole, I found Sant Pau worth the trip, there was a sense of play and mischief here I haven’t found elsewhere.

Sant Pau bakes some of the best bread that I have had. Crusty (+++) , and full of browned flavor, it was among the top 2-3 on the monthlong Europe trip I’ve been chronicling, if not actually the top. I could not resist asking for more, and more, crusty bits (5/5)

Tomato and strawberry velvet, manzanilla, quinoa (4.25/5)

tomato/strawberry, gazpacho, manzanilla sherry, and black quinoa, served in a cocktail glass

Padrón and rice croquette (4.5/5)

Two typical Catalan tapas, the padron pepper and the croquette, were fused into a padron croquette. Seductively mute and provocative, a recently-birthed Venus with a bit of cheese inside the padron pepper. Why isn’t this combination more popular? Delicious.

The gnocchi, gelled as if agarified, a translucent sauce with a pesto-like sauce made of Shiso.

This was a good dish, the langoustines (they described it as “langoustines” when serving the dish) nicely seasoned, though it had less of the firm bite of the ones at Ledoyen.

Lobster pizza: raw and cooked vegetables, creamy mozzarella (4.5/5)

Basil, mozzarella, tomato, squash blossom. As mentioned, it was superficially plausible to be served a lobster pizza, but the full effect of surprise was completed only when seeing the dish, since it had undergone at least one reimagining.

The tastes, while good, was no more than exactly a “lobster pizza”, which did not fire my culinary imagination beyond comfort food. The bread was a robust biscuit cracker.

However, the meat was tender and relatively flavorless, unsurprising since it was a young foal. (veal often suffers from the same problem, the lack of distinctive taste of the meat) It was prepared well though.

While I admire the Mondrian-esque construction, the shiso gelatin with raspberry, coconut, and a solid pillar of apple (I suspect this is important in its structural integrity) was taste-wise nothing special

Tender almonds kiss, sea water (4.75/5)

The simplest dish, and the best (for some reason, the simplicity recalls a magical dessert of coconut and carrot at Asta in Boston)

Tremendously sweet tomatoes (that were intensely raisin-ish, without a trace of tartness),with sheep’s milk yoghurt, and coca – a sweet pizza-like pastry. The tomatoes had been oven-roasted, and not one bit of sugar was added – very surprising, given how sweet it was. Ratafia (a sweet liqueur) was in there somewhere (tomatoes?)

*After a lot of thought, it seems to me that casual restaurants tend to be shortchanged by being ranked on the same scale as fine-dining restaurants. It would be unfair to them, to compare them against a brigade of chefs and staff, dedicated to crafting the edible works of art.

Therefore I have decided to rank casual restaurants on a different scale from formal restaurants. They will be ranked out of 5, and the details can be found here: (https://kennethtiongeats.wordpress.com/ratings/). This will be my first casual place review, using the new ranking system.

TAPAS 24 in Barcelona is often crowded with tourists, especially after the hours of 7.30pm (it features in Japanese guidebooks), and is considered one of the city’s better tapas restaurants (along with El Quim de Boqueria, and Cal Pep). I was recommended this place by at least two people who’ve lived in Barcelona, independently of each other. It is conveniently located on the Passeig de Gracia, near the two Gaudi attractions in the center of town. We ordered the following:

The best dish we tried here. Crisp, the legs were easily edible and crunched off like so many salty crisps. The heads were delectable. I would go on to have great prawns at Etxebarri, 41 Degrees, and ABaC, but these were fantastic, no frills.

7. Sonsos (4/5)

8. A rice stew with artichokes, sea-bass and rice. (3.25/5)

This had alright flavor, if a bit salty. But the serving was meagre, and the seabass texture could barely be discerned.